When forklift trucks, for example, collide with stacking racks in storehouses and the like, this may have far-reaching consequences. Almost in all cases, this results in very high material costs due to the racks collapsing, in many cases aggravated by an uncontrollable domino effects. In addition, this almost always leads to life-threatening situations for the forklift driver or for others who are present in the building. However, such a scenario can easily be prevented by installing a protection device.
Various such protection devices are already known. These devices normally comprise, on the one hand, an outer shell which is configured to be fitted on a column of a rack and, on the other hand, an inner element which, in use, bears against a part of the column. European patent EP 1 689 659 describes a protection device of such constructions According to this patent, the flat inner element, whose ends are connected to the outer shell by means of a first and second connecting means, respectively, and the outer shell are fixedly connected to each other by means of a number of elastic supporting spokes, as a result of which the forces will be dissipated upon impact by bending of the elastic supporting spokes.
Another protection device is described in European patent publication EP 1 738 030. In order to absorb the forces resulting from an impact, the device described therein is provided with a solid inner lining which can be fixedly connected to the outer shell or is displaceably arranged in this outer shell.
In case of an impact, the forces generated by an impact are mainly absorbed and dissipated by the inner element with the above-described protection devices. Nothing more will happen. With such protection devices, there is also the risk that they become detached from the column to which they are fitted in case of severe impact.